#11: A program, a monopoly, and a remote

Hello team,

It’s that time of the week again.

This week’s cartoons are once again themeless, which is I suppose a theme. What follows is a tale of an enterprising cat, a beloved hotelier dog, and a remote control that presses all the wrong buttons.

Brace yourself,
Chris

Like what you see? Follow me on Instagram (@chrisshorten), or talking a friend into following me on Instagram.

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Caption: "With my five- step program, you too could reach your wildest dreams."

Cats!

They’re crafty. They’re clever. And I would like to think they would go far out of their way to run multi-level marketing schemes on other cats. So, they’re essentially human.

This is once again based on how I perceive our cat Molly thinks when she’s outside the house, complete with how much tuna she has stored away as a just-in-case.

A little artist’s note: This started out quite rough. I drew it while in a car, waiting for an appointment. But then it just sort of lingered in the back of my mind. It has had multiple looks since that initial sketch, and more than that in captions, before I settled on that combination of motivational speaker and showing that a cat’s wildest dreams are actually pretty tame.

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Caption: "And a little dog owns the place up the street."

This one might take a few goes.

I love the game of Monopoly but, like anyone who loves playing Monopoly, no one ever wants to play it with me. It’s not that I’m a particularly brutal player, but just that the game itself can be so damn divisive. This cartoon takes that a few steps further to wonder: If you were a customer looking for a hotel, would you trust one run by the little dog? Or the iron, for that matter?

I think you would probably be curious.

A little artist’s note: Whoa, has this one gone through some revisions. As any keen eyed readers will note, my drawing style is slowly evolving and changing shape. People are getting curvier, the shading is getting nicer, and the composition is getting better. This cartoon, in particular, is an example of one that was drawn, then reworked not once, but twice, to bring it to what it is today. Below is a video of the full evolution of this cartoon.

Video not working? Check it out on my Instagram at @chrisshorten

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Caption: Hell's television remote.

I’m pretty sure everyone has or has had this remote.

Some ideas are hard to come by, and others just drift into view. This one, arrived almost fully formed when I glanced over at the remove for the blu-ray player. It reminded me of its DVD player predecessor, which was released to cooincide with a World Cup, and how it had a World-Cup specific button that just didn’t work in Australia. I wondered if it worked anywhere. And then the cartoon kind of snowballed from there into what you see here.

A little artist’s note: There’s nothing too complicated about this cartoon, but it does include a lot of text. The text, once again, is a combination of a basic font in the background, to be used as a guide, with my own handwriting over the top. Simple-ish.

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Thanks for reading MiddleSquiggle!

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